(p. A15) An Israeli politician and human-rights advocate, Mr. Sharansky was once the best-known refusenik—a name for Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate to Israel. In February 1986, he became “the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev.” He served as a cabinet minister in every Israeli government from 1996 to 2005, including a stint as Ariel Sharon’s deputy prime minister from 2001 to 2003.
Before emigrating to Israel, he spent nine years in Soviet prisons accused of treason. He’s 75 but jokes that he’s 66: “My nine years in prison don’t count.”
. . .
Mr. Sharansky abhors Oslo. Still regarded in some circles as the touchstone of Israeli-Palestinian compromise, the agreement handed control of Palestinian land to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in the belief that he would be able to subdue Hamas. “I’m not against compromises with the Palestinians,” Mr. Sharansky says. “I’ve said I’m for a two-state solution from the moment I came to Israel. I want Palestinians to have the same rights as I, but they should never have an opportunity to destroy me.”
At Oslo, he says, Israel foisted “a ruthless dictator on the Palestinians. We told them, “Like it or not, he will be your leader.’ With [Bill] Clinton and all the free world, we gave Arafat the power to destroy all the beginnings of freedom of the Palestinian people and helped build a generation of haters.” Mr. Sharansky says it’s “absolutely ridiculous” that a “fifth generation” of Palestinians lives in refugee camps, but he says “their leaders are to blame. And the free world, that gives money to these leaders—a lot of money.”
Mr. Sharansky is certain that Israel’s security can be assured only by a free Palestinian society, in which people “enjoy a normal life, normal freedom, the opportunity to vote and have their own human rights.” In “The Case for Democracy” (2004), he wrote: “I remain convinced that a neighbor who tramples on the rights of its own people will eventually threaten the security of my people.” The book was published a year before Israel “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, withdrawing the army and forcibly uprooting Jews who had settled there.
That decision led Mr. Sharansky to resign from Sharon’s cabinet. Arafat had failed to tame Hamas, and Mr. Sharansky believed Gaza would be taken over by the terrorist group, whose ideology is “suicide for the sake of destroying the state of Israel.” He resigned before disengagement took effect, because he didn’t want to “take responsibility for the fact that we, by our own hands, were creating the biggest terrorist base in the Middle East, and that missiles will come one day to Ashkelon,” a coastal city less than 10 miles from the Gaza border.
For the full interview, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date October 27, 2023, and has the title “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; Opinion: A Refusenik in a Country at War.” In the original the word “refusenik” was italicized in the body of the interview.)
Natan Sharansky’s book mentioned above is:
Sharansky, Natan. The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. New York: PublicAffairs, 2004.